


Wide sea ahead

by kuutar (teapertti)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Execution, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 03:49:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3555002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teapertti/pseuds/kuutar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On that day died the rest of what was left of me, Bertolt Hoover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wide sea ahead

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Edessäni aava meri](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2527889) by [teapertti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teapertti/pseuds/teapertti). 



> It is wholly up to your decision if the paradoxal narrative structure here is refreshing or pretentious. (This is a translation of the original Author Notes. See the notes on the translation in the end.)

A flag is hoisted to the highest of the poles in the hour before my execution. I am waiting for them in a place where the daylight cannot reach me. In a silence like this, even the feet of a mouse are heavy. The stone floor is ugly and gray, and leaves a foul smell that is inescapable. I haven't moved for several hours. The footsteps of a human resound between the stone and the metal. I see a pair of brown leather boots. Or I would see, if I wasn't almost blind.

Bertolt Hoover sits in the cell and listens to the world waking up for the last time in his life. I was once him, but now I am dead. He is also dead, or what is left of him is nothingness. In the end, does dying mean becoming nothing? His eyes open without really seeing anything.

In the cell next to him, Annie is screaming. She groans and cries out inhuman words; the animal-like noise resounds through the whole prison. The sounds of footsteps. More guards arrive and they beat Annie with the handles of their rifles and spit on her so that she would stop screaming.

"Kill me," she says with the speech of a human, but the guards curse and laugh.

Bertolt raises his head, despite the fact that it makes the back of his neck hurt enormously. I see the madwoman. The sound her boots make is so sharp that it's almost like the ring of a metallic bell. She was once beautiful, but now she is nothing but the hellish and soothing sound of shoe heels. She stops in front of my cell. She wrinkles her nose, because the cell has the smell of death in it, but otherwise her face doesn't reveal anything. Bertolt Hoover sees her as a shadow on his retina and hears her breath.

"The Colossal Titan! Tell me what the wide sea looks like!" she says. I answer nothing. I am not the Colossal Titan. Nobody is anymore. She grasps the bars and says with the voice of a madwoman:

"Tell me! You're the one who knows!" Her voice is like the choir of a thousand ravens. The stone floor feels cold under his hands. The wide sea is great and so... blue? Green? Gray? The sea has no color, and at the same time it has many. Even if a drop is taken away, the sea is still the same...

"Well then," the madwoman says. Bertolt thinks about her voice that once belonged to a girl named Mikasa Ackerman, back when he himself had also been something else.

"Tell me then, which one of you killed Eren Yeager, so I have less trouble deciding which one of you I'll execute first." Eren Yeager? I sure remember him, him lying and writhing on the floor. He was such a small, fragile creature. I don't reply to her. I wish she would go away. She presses her nose against the metal bars and stares.

"You will die anyway! You are nothing! You are literally nothing!" she yells, it's a mocking and desperate yell. Bertolt Hoover rises up suddenly and staggers towards the woman. Someone tries to pull her away, but she doesn't move an inch. They stare at each other; the eyes of the woman are bloodshot and almost bulge out of the eye sockets. On her shoulder there is a rifle that has been beautifully polished up. A fast and loud figure clasps to her blouse and drags her away. I keep my eyes on them as they go.

_The Colossal Titan is dead and I am dead._

I sat roped in a small basement room and listened to a woman talking to herself. Her voice undulated; sometimes it was maniacal, sometimes melancholic. There were some men in her company, and Eren Yeager, too. I don't know much about it, for I was mostly on the other side of consciousness. My arm was black; covered in shades of purplish-gray, for blood had been taken from it countless times. I was not myself anymore. I was not Bertolt Hoover, nor the Colossal Titan, nor anything I had been called before. Annie screamed and heaved; her head had been pressed to the floor with a long pitchfork from which a metal hook extended on the other end. Her lips had been mangled and her arms also had bruises. She tried to escape, fighting like a salmon in the hands of a fisherman. One of the men kicked her head so many times that her body became limp. He cleaned his shoe in a contemptuous way.

"Don't kill her," the woman in a white coat said. Her voice still rises and falls in my head even though I haven't heard it in days.

Eren Yeager was there; 's eyes were sea-colored and they rippled like the surface of the water before a storm. He was afraid. He watched Bertolt, Annie and Reiner, overwhelmed with great doubt. A black-haired man with a hawk-nose, or probably still a boy, kicked Annie's still body.

"Look, it's no use anymore! They lost!" he said and laughed. The sound echoed in the high-ceilinged room: a treacherous, ugly laugh. Already back then my vision had begun to dim and soon the world disappeared into shadows. I was dead. The woman wanted to observe if we could regenerate the parts of our body. She ordered two men to cut Reiner's calf muscles; to slash them with a blade. He fell to the ground and was unable to rise again. Three soldiers applauded, but Eren Yeager didn't say anything.

"They are humans," the woman said. What measures humanity? Reiner groaned with pain and his legs were covered with blood. Someone put a glass of water in front of him, knowing that he was unable to drink from it. I crawled to his side, poured the water to my hand and let him drink. Eren Yeager looked at Annie, Bertolt and Reiner, at their pitiful figures, unable to decide if he wanted to be human again. I know who killed Eren Yeager.

We are executed around midday. Six military police officials come to the prisoners; the handcuffs in their belts make a clinging sound. Annie is taken first. She glares fiercely and hisses; the police officials shout orders and beat her; a fish that swims against the stream, but drifts inevitably towards the sea. Reiner doesn't walk, for he will never walk again. He goes in on all fours without saying a word; pain has shaped his face in a way that one really can't detect anything else other than serenity from it. I am taken last. There are foggy creatures in Bertolt's eyes; they take him away to the bright light. People bellow around the stage. The bellowing gets more intense, ringing in his ears, turning into the buzzing of flies. The madwoman loads the rifle, and next to her stands the demon. Their faces are shadows and their speech is mumbling. The journey from the stone room to the stage is short. The military police officials are joined by a man with a dark voice. He wanders around the prisoners and finally sits on Reiner's back. A faint, crooked smile appears to his lips when Reiner sighs in pain.

"Women first!" someone shouts. Annie looks at the audience and the army officials standing behind her; her eyes are gleaming. People whistle and shout. The voices pierce through the eardrums. The madwoman steps closer. Annie smiles at her over her shoulder. She straightens her posture and makes the military greeting to the audience. Her smile is wide and scornful.

"Humankind will fall anyway!" she cries.The muzzle of the gun is pointing at her back. The first shot splits the air like lightning; a single teardrop falls from her eye. Annie Leonhart lies on the stage. Her body remains in a peculiar position, as if even in the moment of death, she was trying to oppose everything she had resisted during her lifetime.

"The Female Titan! Annie Leonhart!" A voice of a man announces and the audience cheers, as if it has witnessed a great heroic deed. Bertolt remembers that he has once been a titan, the Colossal Titan. He remembers having stood next to Wall Maria and looking over the city to the horizon, where the wide blue sea glowed and surged. For a moment everything was well, but now I am dead. The man with the dark voice finally rises from Reiner's back and tells the woman to aim the rifle to the head. I close my eyes and listen to how the gun is loaded; the breathing of the madwoman quickens, and the demon-like man whimpers silently, and the other man taps the wooden stage with the tip of his boot. Somehow the second shot is more silent than the first one. The executioner is told to shoot again, just in case; the woman places the barrel to the back of Reiner's neck and shoots. It's almost inaudible under the voices of the audience.

"The Armored Titan! Reiner Braun!" Only I am left.

Brightness and noise; the people sound restless and angry. Their voices resonate in a strange harmony, like meter-high waves. A rooster crows, even though it's not morning anymore. Bertolt turns to look at the woman who strokes the rifle carefully before loading it. She raises her gaze from the gun and says:

"It was you, wasn't it? Those two couldn't have done it." Eren Yeager, Eren Yeager. The pale face and the glassy eyes. The horrified sighs of the people as he lay in the floor. The darkness. The figure of the madwoman is movement before me; she is the vibration of the vocal folds and heavy gasps of breath.

"You may believe so. The truth doesn't need me as an advocate," Bertolt replies and turns to face the audience. The journey, from the stage to the place where the bodies are burned, would be short. I don't see humans; only the sea. The woman hesitates before she raises the rifle and shoots.

Bertolt Hoover falls to the ground, next to the two other human beings. The audience stomps and cheers. They raise their hands and hit the wooden surface of the benches. He sees the sea. It's enormously big; in the heart of it lives humanity but it surges fiercely over the shore. It is one and it is many.

"Bertolt Hoover! The Colossal Titan! Bertolt Hoover is dead!" The madwoman shouts. I am dead! For a moment everything is well and my eyes can see again; they discern what is true. Again I rise above others, and the wide sea looms ahead of me.

A flag is hoisted to the highest of the poles in the hour before my execution.

**Author's Note:**

> The translation of this particular fic was somehow tricky to do, mostly because of the different syntactic features of English and the source language, Finnish. Luckily, with the generous help of the user Aespren, I've hopefully managed to make the text readable while keeping the distinct style. I actually never meant this particular story to be stylistically coherent or pleasant to read, for in my opinion it would distract the reader from the crude reality that the narrator is experiencing. Thanks for reading!


End file.
